


Coffee Mugs and Romance Novels

by tokillthatmockingbird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, and it's baby!scott so who doesn't love that, and melissa comes to the rescue, because who doesn't need more amazing!mother melissa mccall in their lives, in which rafael is a douchebag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 06:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokillthatmockingbird/pseuds/tokillthatmockingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he cries, he cries quietly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee Mugs and Romance Novels

“Show it to me again!” Scott McCall is six years old and endlessly enamored by his mother. They sit, cross-legged and smiling, the center of their tiny living room, speaking in low but excited whispers. The lights are off, and the blinds are drawn tight. If they stop rustling the sheets above their head long enough, they can hear quiet clicking of computer keys in the next room.

Melissa points the flashlight at their shadow-canvas and arranges her fingers into a wild shape. On the white of the crinkled bedsheet, a bunny hops to life. Scott squeals in delight and scrambles towards her, gap-toothed and grinning. He clambers into her lap and presents open palms.

“How do you do it?” he asks, full of wonder and adoration.

Melissa nuzzles her nose into his dark shock of hair, planting a kiss on the crown of his head. “Like… _this_ ,” she whispers, twisting his fingers the correct way. When Scott lifts his hand in front of their makeshift spotlight, he gasps as if he has just discovered the next Wonder of the World. Melissa feels herself falling more in love with his bright-eyed curiosity every single day.

“Can you make any other ones?” Scott asks incredulously.

Melissa scrunches her nose in thought. “I don’t think so, _mijo_ ,” she tells him softly. “But we can try to make some up!”

“Let’s make a _dragon_!” At six years old, Scott has practiced very little on controlling his volume control. Teachers always admonish and beg for indoor voices, and he tries to please them with little success. He cries quietly but talks loudly— and forget about whispering for more than a few seconds.

“ _Scott_!” Rafael shouts from his office. “Keep it down out there! I’m trying to work.”

Scott’s face flushes, and he buries it into his mother’s shoulder, heat rising from his skin. He immediately bites back his tears in shuddering sniffles. Melissa coos quietly in his ear, rubbing small circles between his shoulder blades. “Shhh, baby,” she mutters. “It’s okay. He didn’t mean it to be mean. We just got a little too loud.”

There is a dull and heavy sound of objects falling to the floor, and Scott tenses in his mother’s embrace.

“God damn it! _Melissa_!” Rafael calls. He throws open the door to his office, and Melissa brushes aside the door to the sheet-tent, poking her head out. “Where did you put my briefcase?”

Her brow knits. “I didn’t touch your briefcase.”

“You cleaned up my office this morning, and now my briefcase is _missing_!” Rafael demands.

“I cleaned your office, but I didn’t _touch_ your briefcase!” Melissa repeats firmly, her hand cradling the back of Scott’s head as he rests on her shoulder. “And, by the way, you’re welcome for cleaning your office.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” His voice is harsh and low, and Scott associates the sound with the bad guys in all the stories that his mother tells him. He knows that his father isn’t a bad guy; it’s his job to get _rid_ of bad guys, and Scott doesn’t know enough of intricacies to know that bad people weren’t just criminals. Bad people could be FBI Agents and doctors and fathers. “If you didn’t touch my briefcase, then where the hell is it?”

“I don’t _know_ , Rafael. Where did you _put_ your briefcase?” Melissa asks, voice biting with sarcasm.

“Don’t patronize me, Melissa!” Rafael barks. He gestures blindly back at his office. “I put it under my desk where I always put it, and it’s not fucking _there_ anymore.”

“Daddy, I think I know where your briefcase is.” Scott’s voice is hoarse with toddler fear. He turns in his mother’s arms and matches his wide brown eyes with his father’s. Rafael looks expectantly, and Scott disentangles his limbs with his mother’s before stumbling into his bedroom. He emerges moments later, dragging the case behind him, leaving a trail on the carpet. “I took it.”

It was more harmless than that. Scott never does anything out of malice, and taking his father’s briefcase was essentially an act of love. While Melissa talked on the phone with her mother, Scott entertained himself by playing Cops and Robbers. He had wanted to be his father, and what better way to emulate him than using the briefcase that he had rarely seen the man without?

Rafael crouches down to Scott’s eye level. “Why did you take my briefcase?” he asks, anger tightly strung through his words.

Scott casts his gaze to the floor and carefully surveys his father’s shoes. He drags his toes in the carpet. “‘Cause.”

“‘Cause is not an answer, Scott,” Rafael demands, though his voice is noticeably less sharp than when he speaks to Melissa. “Why did you take my briefcase without my permission?” Scott is too flustered to answer. He opens his mouth and tries to speak, but the fear carries his words away.

When he cries, he cries quietly.

“ _Why did you take my briefcase, Scott?_ ” Rafael’s volume is loud and impactful.

“Rafael!” Melissa demands.

“I just wanted to be like you!” Scott finally is able to wail around paralyzed vocal chords.

“You don’t get to take people’s things without asking!” Rafael scolds, though he visibly softens at his son’s words. “You did something very bad, Scott, and I think you should go in time out.”

Melissa rolls her eyes and scoops up her inconsolable child. Scott is rarely punished because his default is to please. Despite a lack of volume control, students, parents, and teachers alike adore his unending desire to keep the peace and help anyone who needs it. “I didn’t mean to!” he wails, rubbing snot and tears into Melissa’s shirt.

“It’s okay. I’ll sit in there with you,” Melissa tells him, rocking from foot-to-foot, using a calm voice to counter Rafael’s harsh one.

“That’s not the _point_ of time out—!”

“The point of time out is to punish him, and I think by yelling in his face, you’ve achieved just that. Don’t worry. He’s never going to take your stupid briefcase again,” Melissa assures her husband with her biting snark that once made her so incredibly attracted to her. Now it is just infuriating and subordinate, and Rafael never imagined his marriage to be a battle.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” Scott blubbers incoherently, rubbing a fist at his leaking nose, and he genuinely is sorry. He is sensitive to the spikes of anger that rip through his home, and he is sensitive to the fact that he has caused them this time. His home life has never been perfect, but it is the only one he knows, and he thinks it’s the only one he could ever have.He knows nothing of constructing a family but that his parents chose to build this one.

Melissa presses a kiss into his shock of dark hair. “ _Ven acá, mijo_.”

She starts towards the corner of the room, where she figures it’s as good a place as any to have time out. (She’s never sent Scott there before.) But before she can pad across the carpet, Rafael has a tight grip on her upper arm. “Melissa, stop fucking around!” he hisses through gritted teeth, and Scott seizes up, even tears stopping their flow. When he looks at his father, his eyes are impossibly large and watery, flickering with confusion and horror.

It’s the first act of real violence he has ever seen. It won’t be the last.

“Rafael,” Melissa growls, jaw clenched dangerously. Scott isn’t breathing. “Let. Go.”

Rafael blinks, as if pulling himself out of a trance, and releases his grip on his wife’s arm, taking distancing steps from his family. “I… right. Right.” He clears his throat, and when his eyes fall on Scott’s face, his crumples slightly. “Scottie, it’s okay. It’s… you don’t have to go to time out. You said you were sorry, right?” Scott’s reply is silence. “Right, so… so… I’m…” Rafael, so baffled by his own actions, keeps putting distance between his wife and child and himself. “I’m gonna go back to the office. I think I left some paperwork there.”

When the door slams shut, the house shakes and echoes with it. Scott and Melissa stand in the wake of the noise as it settles into the carpet, and for a moment, the silence is white noise. Scott starts bawling again, and Melissa starts to pace and rock, quiet shushing to calm his frayed nerves. “It’s okay, baby. He’s not mad at you, I promise,” she tells him, smoothing hair out of his eyes and peppering his forehead with kisses. “It’s okay! Come on. Let’s go see how many marshmallows we can fit in our mouths.” Scott chokes on a sob and picks up his head with minimal energy. A warm, maternal smile turns the corners of Melissa’s lips. “Would you like that? Come on. I bet I could fit a hundred this time.”

“Mom, that’s impossible,” Scott sniffs, rubbing at his eyes.

“Well, how do we know if we haven’t tried yet?” she asks with a laugh.

Scott never again stole his father’s briefcase. Not because of his almost-punishment, but because he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to be like him again. He started carrying around coffee mugs and romance novels instead, because that’s what his mother did, and that’s who he decided he wanted, no, _needed_ to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Just another self-indulgent fic. (That's all I seem to be writing these days, so honestly, let me know if there is something you want to see from me, and I will do my best to grant YOUR wish instead of my own) I just wanted to showcase how amazingly awesome Melissa McCall is, and I needed some Baby!Scott in my life.


End file.
